bask

we can beg for mercy

but we must bask in grace

it cannot be earned

it cannot be achieved

it can only be received

grace is lavished upon us

all that’s required is openness

willingness to bathe ourselves

in his goodness and his love

fly

come to the edge of the nest

hear the invitation of God

receive his gentle push

leave the safety and security

of what you have known

and take the leap into

the vast unknown

soar into the heavens

on the winds of his breath

take flight and become

all you were created to be

christmas in july

Okay, so I know it’s not July yet, but close enough.  I also know that the whole idea of new birth is gaining a ton of life in me these days.  Mostly because I feel like it’s what God is inviting me to―a quality and depth of life that I have not yet known.  In fact, it’s what he’s inviting all of us to.  It’s the way that he’s doing it that’s surprising, although it should not be.  The way to this new life is through my weakness, frailty, and vulnerability.  It’s coming through embracing my humanity.  It’s coming, as Sue Monk Kidd so beautifully writes, through the dung and the straw:

     “In the passage of emergence, as birthing begins, the soul becomes a nativity.  The whole Bethlehem pageant starts up inside us.  An unprecedented new star shines in our darkness―a new illumination and awareness.  God sends Wisdom to visit us, bearing gifts.  The shepherding qualities inside us are summoned to help tend what’s being born.  The angels sing and a whole new music begins to float in the spheres.  Some new living, breathing dimension of the life of Christ emerges with a tiny cry that says, I am.

     One of the best parts of the whole drama is that it happens in the dung and straw of our life, just as it happened in the dung and straw of Bethlehem. Birthing Christ is an experience of humility. Emerging to newness after the rigors of the cocoon isn’t a spiritual ‘promotion.’ There’s no presentation of a twenty-four-carat halo and a fancy new Christian persona without scuffs. If we’re consumed with holy pride, convinced that we’re spiritually ‘right’ and on a higher plane than others, we haven’t birthed a wider experience of the inner Christ but a new creation of the ego.

     The Christ life doesn’t divorce us from our humanity: it causes us to embrace it. It makes us more human. It humbles us. Genuine transformation always connects us to our essential nature, both sacred and profane. When we go through its passages, we plumb the depths of our humanity. We become intimate with what lies inside—the wild and untamed, the orphaned and abused, the soiled and unredeemed. We hold our falseness in our hands and trace our fingers over the masks we wear, like a blind person feeling the unseen faces of those she wants to know. We stare into the sockets of our pain and glimpse the naked truth of who we are.

     All this we bring with us into the new life. It ushers us into a new humility. Oh, yes, no doubt about it. We birth Christ, on a pile of ordinary straw.” (from When the Heart Waits by Sue Monk Kidd)

Christ wants to be born anew in us, but that new birth is most likely to come in our places of greatest weakness and vulnerability. In the dung and in the straw of our own humanity.  In our flaws and in our frailty, that's where his transforming power shows up best.

Lord Jesus, in this world we are most likely to find you in the dung and the straw.  Help us not to be afraid to look for you there.

come home

come home to yourself

not the home you have built

but the one built for you

strip away the layers

of accumulated wallpaper

and get down to the original

to what is true and real

it’s going to take a while

to undo the ego patterns

and unravel the illusions

and deconstruct the story

you have created for yourself

it will not be easy to strip away 

the manufactured self

the one that doesn’t really exist

but in the end it will all be worth it

the home you’ve been living in

is not really your home

but merely a construction of

your deepest wounds

and your greatest fears

so come home to yourself

if you have the nerve

God will be your guide

he is the only one who

can show you the way

but it will not be easy

stripping and undoing

and unravelling 

and emptying 

never is

let him take you there

in God

God in us

the hope of glory

us in God

the intimacy of 

divine union

becoming bartimaeus

there is a beggar

inside each of us

dying to get out

longing to be set free

from the illusion of

strength and adequacy

a lowly pauper

waiting to be seen

and acknowledged

yearning to live out of

authentic dependence

neediness and weakness

instead of trying to

fool the world via

autonomy and control

but in order to make the leap

from falsehood to truth

we must be willing to

put on our beggar's clothes

and allow the deepest cry

of our hearts to be

Lord, have mercy on me

only then do we have

any real hope of finding

genuine transformation

wait for the Lord

What does it mean to wait for the Lord?  What does it really look like?  And why do we have such a hard time doing it?

As a culture, we’re really not into waiting—for anything.  And when we do it’s usually only because we have no other choice.  And if we’re honest, even when we do try to wait for the Lord, we’re really not waiting for him but for a favorable outcome or a change in circumstance.  Most of the time, our version of waiting for the Lord is just trying to use him to get what we want.  He is not the end, but merely a means to our preferred end.  And anytime we approach God not as the end, but as a means to an end, we’re not really approaching him at all.  We’re only trying to get our way or further our agenda.  And that’s not what waiting for the Lord is at all. 

Waiting for the Lord is just that—waiting for the Lord. Waiting for the Lord is laying aside our plans and schemes and agendas.  It is letting go of autonomy and control.  It is surrendering our wants and needs.  Waiting for the Lord is a refusal to try and manage, maneuver, or manipulate outcomes.  It is standing before God totally empty and fully open, willing to do whatever he asks and to go wherever he leads.  Waiting for the Lord is the determination not to charge ahead until we receive a word from him.

Waiting for the Lord is not just something we do until the Lord shows up.  Waiting for the Lord is God showing up.  It is through waiting for him that we are changed.  We are not waiting for transformation; it is in the waiting that God is transforming us.  We cannot do it ourselves.

Thus, waiting for the Lord involves a total dependence upon God.  It involves the realization that we cannot do things on our own.  For whenever we try to do it on our own, we cease to wait for the Lord.  That’s why the psalm says: “For God alone my soul waits in silence.”